The racist hierarchy in the South manifested in several ways, but most people don’t know that racism
even impacted what foods blacks were allowed to buy. As Maya Angelou
once wrote, it was custom not to sell vanilla ice cream to blacks in
many parts of the South, except on Independence Day.

As The Guardian notes, even
though it was a black slave named Edmund Albius who perfected the
flavor of vanilla ice cream, its white sweetness was viewed as a
representation of the American dream, which is why blacks were kept from
eating it.